5 things real quick

Fiction by Luke O'Neil

The closet 

I was feeling around for the nest in the back of the closet and there it was just where my daughter had been saying it was supposed to have been all week and a certain amount of guilt came over me with that realization. That I hadn’t believed her. Worse had lectured her on the unlikelihood. Well I’ve gotta take the L on this one baby I said which embarrassed her. A man my age talking like that.

We couldn’t afford a team to come haul it out and up and off to be burned in the pits considering all of what they are charging these days so the only other thing I could think of to do was to fist wrist deep into the paper pulpy combs of it to show her that it wasn't so deadly after all. A friend of ours had had one of these whole deals in his apartment not long ago I told her. Before you were born I said. Look at this I said. Just a handful of bites I said. Showing her my purple arm. Should clear up in a few days I said. If anything it kind of feels good I said. Nothing to lose sleep over anyway I said. Daddy is still alive I said. 

And I always will be. 

Here come try it yourself. 

One of those dreams where you fall in love with nobody

I imagined you in the early morning. Invented you. One third awake. Half awake now. Dawning on me incrementally how I will shortly have betrayed both of us. Or what it will have always had to have been that you will have always had to have done to me. Our coming shared loss.